4 months ago

4 months ago

4 months ago

The Big Ten Tournament starting today certainly has the focus of everyone following the conference’s basketball scene except for one head coach. Iowa‘s Fran McCaffery announced in a statement that his son has a tumor on his thyroid. Thirteen-year-old Patrick discovered the tumor last week and will undergo surgery next Wednesday, the day before he turns 14. While we may all have our focus set to basketball and brackets this weekend, McCaffery’s certainly could be elsewhere.

There are plenty of tournament predictions out there and Ken Pomeroy released his log5 thoughts yesterday. He gives the top two seeds the most respect in Michigan and Wisconsin while dropping the Cornhuskers plenty with only a 5 percent chance to win the whole thing. That chance is closer to least-probable Northwestern’s chances than it is to Iowa’s, which is one step above Nebraska. Beyond that the prediction is pretty straight forward in nearly following the seed lines. Some teams may be a tad bit high or low for everyone’s thoughts, but with how this conference season has went, it makes sense to not have any heavy favorites.

The season may not be over for any Big Ten teams this morning, but that doesn’t mean the coaching searches haven’t started for programs that are finished. With this in mind, Sports Illustrated’s Brian Hamilton took a look at the top assistants in the country that could be looking to take their first head coaching job. The Big Ten has three names on the list: Ohio State‘s Jeff Boals, Wisconsin‘s Greg Gard, and Michigan‘s LaVall Jordan. All of the names are solid considerations and have been linked to jobs the past few seasons and certainly could be headed out soon. There was one name that we were surprised not to see – Michigan State‘s Dwayne Stephens. Some may expect him to eventually succeed Tom Izzo, but if Gard’s name is coming up, certainly Stephens should, too. This is a guy who has developed big men Adreian Payne and Draymond Green and been named a top 15 recruiter and assistant coach in the past two years. Really, though, there are plenty of assistant and associate head coaches in the Big Ten that could find head coaching gigs in the near future.

Ohio State got back to winning ways against Michigan State, but that didn’t mean an easy week of practice. The Buckeyes have prepped for the Big Ten Tournament with a challenging week, despite it being the first time they will play on Thursday in the BTT since 2005. This tournament has plenty of intrigue for Ohio State who drew a Purdue team it swept to open the tournament. The games will be important to determining exactly where the Buckeyes end up in the seeding line of the NCAA Tournament, win a few games and a five or six seed is possible, loss to Purdue and it could fall to the dreaded 8-9 game.

The Big Ten Tournament has never treated Indiana well. It has lost in the quarterfinals or first round 11 times in its 16 years of existence. The Hoosiers only have one championship game appearance and have never won the whole thing. That doesn’t matter to this year’s team, who just wants to focus on its first game against Illinois today. Still, this Indiana team needs history to change (and make history in itself by being hte lowest seed to win the tournament) if it wants to play in the NCAA Tournament. Indiana is likely only going if it wins the whole thing, so either history is changing or the Hoosiers are going to start paying close attention to NBA Draft announcements regarding Noah Vonleh.